The country's shipments of engineering goods have increased almost eight fold in the last decade to become the biggest item of exports, ahead of primary products that used to dominate earlier.

Engineering goods include metal products, industrial machinery and equipment, auto and its components, and transport equipment.

"The rest of the world has begun to see India as a good destination for engineering goods where we have scale of operations as well as niche and proprietary products," said Yatin Shah, managing director, Precision Camshafts.

The government's incentives to exports to non-traditional markets have helped Indian companies. The share of Europe and the US is down nearly 15 percentage points over the decade. The share of Russian Federation, Middle East and Africa is up to 13.5% from 5% a decade back.

"The engineering goods have moved from the low to the medium end in terms of skill, knowledge and R&D applied," says KT Chacko, Director of IIFT.

"Emerging markets in general are more cost competitive," said Shankar Raman , CFO of engineering major L&T. "There seems to be a shift from the high cost-low productivity west to low cost-high productivity east," he said.

Precision Camshafts is increasing its capacity and will soon become the largest camshaft manufacturer in the world.

A two-and-a-half times increase in exports over a period of 7-8 years is clearly achievable", BN Kalyani, Chairman and Managing Director, Bharat Forge added.